So, last night got up to go to the bathroom. Before I got to the bathroom I did a deep stretch with a deep yawn and felt the pins and needles coming on.
Next thing I know I’m laying on the floor of my apartment. Knees all cut up and sore, ribs sore, and head sore. I obviously dropped pretty quick and hard.
When I came to I was having random visions and scrambled thoughts flying through my mind and then I realized where I was.
So I got back up, took stock, and took my heart rate which as 70 BPM with an O2 level of 94.
Fuck did my head feel groggy. Like it always does after one of these.
And no, these aren’t seizures.
I had these since I was a teen.
They got really bad until my mid 20’s, then they just went away after I quit smoking.
They started coming back about 2017.
I don’t know if these are related to my undetermined heart issue, but no one has come up with a good idea as to what these are other than just calling them “syncope”.
I’ve had holter testing which hasn’t revealed anything.
I did EEG testing during a sleep test which didn’t reveal anything.
I went for EEG testing around 2012 to see if I was prone to seizures. Nope. Just prone to migraines.
Usually these episodes are triggered by me standing up, stretching, and yawning right after sleeping or napping. I usually get one hell of a good head-rush and if I feel the pins and needles sensation coming on then I can grab on to something to steady myself. But if I don’t find anything to steady myself with, then down I go.
What about your meds Bobbie? Maybe these are triggered by your drugs???
Don’t think so.
I didn’t start escitalopram until 2021, and I didn’t start estrogen therapy until back in May of this year. I don’t drink and I don’t smoke nor do I partake.
Strokes? Mini-Strokes? TIAs? Testing hasn’t said anything so far.
All I know is that I’m going to have some pretty decent bruising on both of my knees over the next few days.
Okay, so the babysitter matter seems to be winding its way through the lawyers, which is nice.
But one matter that won’t ever get taken care of is the ’95 mugging.
As I mentioned previously in other postings, I had been to a late show at the Capitol 6 on Granville St. I went to see Congo at the Capitol 6.
Going to the late shows was something that I got into the habit of when I first moved to Vancouver. This was due to the fact that most of the jobs I had were evening jobs.
Most of the theatres on Granville were running late shows. The theatre on the south west corner of Granville and Smyth was forever showing Bob Guccione’s “Caligula”, the Caprice was showing films like Clockwork Orange, 2001 A Space Odyssey, and old black and white films.
Once the City of Vancouver turned Granville Street into Booze Can Alley in the early 2000’s all of the theatres were converted into booze cans / night clubs. The Capitol 6 was shut down in the early 2000’s to make way for condos. The Granville 7 ceased operations in the late 2000. Outside of the Vogue theatre, which itself was at risk of being gutted and converted into a bar, there are no movie theatres left on Granville St.
In July of ’95 I was working for Elashi developments / Lois Lanes Bowling & Billiards out in East Richmond on Gilley Road. I got off work as I usually did at 22:00 and I caught the #410 to 22nd street station. And like I did every Friday previously, I took the train downtown instead of into New West.
I forgot what I wanted to see, but I ended up seeing a movie called “Congo”. This movie was panned and reviled by the critics at the time, but the film that I had wanted to see wasn’t going to be shown as the film hadn’t arrived on time.
Young kids these days will never know the frustration of showing up to a theatre and being unable to see a film because it didn’t arrive in time, it got sent to the wrong theatre , or it got so damaged that the theatre had to request a new print. Nowadays theatres get their movies either via digital satellite download, or by a hard drive package.
Before leaving the bowling centre, Rosa had given a fist full of Canadian Tire money as she knew I was planning on going to Canadian Tire the next day to pick up some parts for a car that I was trying to get running.
I’ve gone into detail on this matter before, so I’m not going to go into the details again. But to quickly recap, some guy and his girlfriend in the concession stand line mistook the Canadian Tire money in my pocket as high denomination bills.
Security tape from the theatre showed them leaving the concession line as soon as I did, and they followed me right into the theatre. The same tape also apparently showed them leaving the theatre and following me right out the front doors.
The movies would end around 01:30 to 02:00 and as is still the case these days, there is no Skytrain back east at these hours. The only way to get home to New West was to catch the #19 which would make its way from downtown to Stanley Park. And the only way to get a seat on the #19 would be to board the bus over at Pender and Burrard. And that’s where I was heading after the movie was over.
The blue asterisk is where the Capitol 6 used to be. The Yellow dot at Pender and Burrard was my intended destination. The black star is as far as I made it.
Looking south on Burrard to West Georgia.
This is where I got “clubbed”.
Didn’t hear much except for somebody running up behind me. As I had just passed the bus stop in the photo I assumed that it was just someone running either for the bus or was running down to Pender to get the #19.
The guy was about 6′ tall, East Indian male, beard, well built.
The female was white, about 5’6″, white heels, white mini-skirt.
He was armed with a red steering wheel club.
From what I can remember, he didn’t have this is the theatre.
The female was armed with a fair sized kitchen knife. I distinctly remember the three rivets in the handle.
I don’t think that most people walk around with a 10″ chef’s knife in their purse.
The only thing that I can think of is that they had a car parked nearby. And if they were this quick to arm themselves, this probably wasn’t the first time they had jumped someone.
He kept striking me with the club as I was on the ground and kicking me in the back and in the head. As he tried to search my pockets for the “money” he’d keep telling the female to stab me with the knife if I tried to fight back or tried to hit him.
All they managed to get was my wallet that didn’t contain much in money. The security guards from the Hyatt Regency raced over and chased them two suspects away.
Hyatt Regency hotel across the street where the two security guards came from.
I spent Saturday morning getting stitches in my scalp from the blows from the club.
The Vancouver Police Department officer, Constable Gil Puder, was a complete jerk. Even the nurse putting my stitches in was getting upset with him and told him that his questions were inappropriate and that he’d have to leave.
As he walked away he tossed the statement sheet on my stretcher and said that when I felt like telling him the truth I could fill the form in and get it back to him
When I was released Rosa came to pick me up and drove me back to my apartment.
My jacket had so much blood in it that when it dried out it was not flexible. I had to crunch it up to get it into the washing machine.
Looking North on Burrard to Pender.
I went back downtown on Monday. I was hoping to find my wallet as it had all of my identification in it. When I got to the place where I had been mugged, the maintenance crew from Park Place were outside using the pressure washer to clean my blood off the sidewalk. I guess it had dried on Saturday and Sunday and was proving difficult to clean off.
I traced my steps from the Saturday morning and I figured out that it had to be someone from around the movie theatre. It was just by chance that I decided to ask the theatre if they had a video tape of the Friday night.
The manager was nice, she asked me for a description of the people, and then she went to view the video tape. She came back about 20 minutes later and said that she saw the two people I had described and me. She said that they were in the concession lineup next to me, they seemed to get excited when I pulled something out of my pocket, and then the left the lineup and followed me right into the theatre. When the movie was over they followed me right out. When I went to the washroom, he followed me into the washroom, and then he followed me right out.
What did they get excited about?
The Canadian Tire money.
The manger said that she would put the tapes aside and if the VPD officer wanted to come by and pick them up that they’d be waiting.
I called constable Puder.
Nope, he wasn’t buying it.
He had made up his mind that I was a gay male prostitute and that I tried picking this guy up in a gay bar and that until I admitted the truth he wasn’t going to waste his time.
Now, after having spent three years in the care of Terry Totzke for issues related to the apparent homosexuality that I had exhibited when I “allowed” myself to be molested, I wasn’t in the right mindset to deal with this.
I still don’t know what it was that made Puder think that I was gay, let alone a prostitute.
First, I didn’t drink, so I wouldn’t be anywhere near a bar.
And at that point in my life, you couldn’t have found me anywhere near Davie Street. I would have gone out of my way to stay away from any place like Davie street.
Second, I was still quite fucked up from having been dealt with by Terry Totzke, so I wasn’t even sexually interested in anything back then.
Was it the way that I dressed?
Was it some sort of lisp that I wasn’t aware that I had?
Was it my moustache that I had at the time?
Was it my haircut?
At the time I had been mugged it would have been 12 years since being dealt with by Terry Totzke for being a “homosexual”.
I survived working at Classic Billiards with my sexuality being questioned by the two co-owners who were police officers with the Metropolitan Toronto Police service.
I lost a job that I had moved to in Toronto for because my manager hadn’t been told that he was getting a fruit.
So, to have constable Puder literally blame me for getting myself mugged it was the CFB Namao matter all over again.
When cops tell you that there is no such thing as the “thin blue line”, they’re full of shit. The problem with cops is they’re trained in the “us vs. them” mentality. They’re trained, and it’s drilled into their skulls, that they are the only ones standing between law & order and the complete collapse of society.
And the VPD had all sorts of problems back in the ’90s. The dysfunction within the VPD is what led to Robert Pickton’s murder spree in the DTES.
When I went into the VPD on Main Street and tried to make a complaint against Puder and to ask for the case to be transferred to another constable I was literally shown the front doors of the Main St. station and told to get out and that if I came back again that I’d be charged with trespassing and harassment.
Puder died in the late ’90s.
I had someone I knew suggest that Puder’s brain tumour had fucked him up so badly that his brain was fried.
So whaddya think?
Was it Puder’s brain tumour that fucked up his common sense?
Or is “gaydar” a real thing and that gay/bi/trans people give off “signals”?
I mean, the babysitter and McRae, Totzke, Earl, Ed, Dirk, Don, Puder, Ron, Alex, and others can’t have just been randomly guessing that I was “gay”.
Even the kids at Pierre Laporte in North York often claimed that I was gay, a fag, a homo, that I walked like a girl, etc.
I do have the VPD incident report, and except for the notes from the morning that I was in the hospital, there’s nothing else to the investigation. I guess that Puder really did kill the investigation.
And so this one will go down as another unsolved crime.
Work is interesting, but it’s extremely stressful. And not in a good way.
People ask if I’m going to the new site when it opens.
FUCK NO.
Three people on the committee planning the new site made it very clear that I am personna non grata at the new site, so fuck it. My life has enough shit going on in it, I don’t need to go there and take a shit shower from these three.
I love it when my ideas and suggestions and ideas are “too outlandish”, and “too silly”, and “completely unjustified”. But yet they show up in the current build as someone else’s proposal.
I was so looking forward to having made my application for M.A.i.D. this past March, but the fucking milquetoast liberals got a bad case of the chicken shits at the last moment.
Basically I’m holding on to my current job as kinda a massive “fuck you!” to certain federal agencies in Canada that decided that my mental health was expendable.
I’m also holding on to my current job to spite all of the corporate bag lickers and pole smokers from my past jobs that said that I would never amount to anything because I was too damaged.
Once operations at the new site start to wind down in 2027 I should have a better idea as to whether or not I’ll be able to undergo M.A.i.D.
If the right wing tide of hate keeps sweeping across North America then M.A.i.D. will still be unavailable for persons such as myself.
If that’s the case then my intentions are to stay at the old site until it shuts down in 2030.
By that time I’ll be able to retire and walk away from it all.
Okay, so I’ve been playing around with Ancestry.ca for a few days.
Came across some interesting information.
My stepmother’s parents were Mr. Teunis Zwolle and Mrs. Willemina Zwolle.
1980’s voter roll for Oshawa, Durham Region, Ontario133 Gibb Street, Oshawa, Ontario Zwolle houshold
And due to the voters roll, I now know the address for Richard’s father, and his stepmother Aldean. When I tracked down my mother in 2013 I asked her what the name of Arthur Gill’s second wife was. Marie said that her name was Ladean. Wasn’t. Her name was Aldeen.
Arthur and Aldeen Gill. 258 Drew Street, Oshawa, Ontario258 Drew Street. Oshawa, Ontario
In 1982, when Richard flew us out to Ontario for the Christmas holidays, we stayed at Arthur’s and Ladeen’s house. I remember walking back and forth between the Gill house and the Zwolle house.
A quick check of google maps shows that they are well within walking distance of each other.
Pretty straight walk. And as kids we walked a lot, so this walk wouldn’t have been too much at all.
After the initial stay with Arthur over xmas ’82, we never did go see Arthur again.
My father was posted to CFB Downsview in April of ’83 to avoid my apprehension by Alberta Social Services.
When we lived on Canadian Forces Base Downsview in North York, we’d go visit Sue’s parents frequently. Almost every second weekend. For sure once a month as Sue liked to shop at Knob Hill Farms.
50 minute car drive from 223F Stanley Green Park on Canadian Forces Base Downsview to 133 Gibb Street in Oshawa, Ontario
No matter how many times we went to see the Zwolle’s, we never once ever went to see the Gill’s again.
According to my social service records, Richard was trying to pawn me off on to his father. I guess by that time Arthur had moved on with his new family and he didn’t want to look after the kids of his son from a previous marriage.
All I remember about Arthur and Ladeen is that they liked my brother and I but Arthur was really dismissive of Richard and really didn’t want anything to do with him.
The physical closeness of these two families in Oshawa also lends a bit of credence to another issue that may have caused the estrangement between Richard and his father.
Both Arthur’s and Ladeen’s daughters went to school with Susan. Apparently Arthur and Ladeen were none too impressed with Richard having used his stepsisters, their daughters, to hook up with Sue on one of his visits to Oshawa after we moved to CFB Namao in the summer of 1978.
So it really wasn’t a coincidence that a girl from Oshawa ended up living in Edmonton with a man with relatives from the girl’s hometown.
Through my DNA test I have found a few members of the Dagenais clan in Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes that appear to be on the order of 2nd or 3rd cousins.
One unexpected blast that I discovered is my paternal great grandmother was born in 1899 and married in 1913 at the age of 13.
My paternal grandmother, Margaret, was born in 1923 when Caroline was 22.
I wonder if grandma was some older siblings that haven’t been found yet.
I haven’t yet found Norman, the older brother of both Richard and Doug.
Richard was born in 1946 when Margaret was 23. What I remember about uncle Norman is that he was about 6 years older than Richard.
So, I’ll keep shaking the family tree to see what else falls to the ground.
My coccyx seems to have healed, so I’ll be able to resume long bike rides again.
A cracked coccyx is not a fun thing.
I have my first blood test tomorrow to see how my body is adapting to estrogen.
I had no idea that a woman’s breasts went under their arms. As mine are developing I can feel breast tissue growing under my arms.
I still don’t really have much to show, but I did notice yesterday for the first time as I was out walking and drinking a coffee that as my arm swept upwards on my chest I could feel my arm lifting my breast.
I might go to Whistler for a few days after the Whistler gondola opens for the season.
Might also pop down to Seattle, Portland, or maybe even L.A..
Other than that I have nothing really planned for this year.
Probably do a lot of bicycle riding and scooting locally and put my camera to good use.
I’m tired this year.
I think the legal frustrations and fights that I’ve endured over the last 12 years are finally eating away at me.
On one hand, learning the truth about how things really were back then, and the number of cracks that I fell through, and the number of rugs that I got swept under has somewhat freed me from the past, the past has still taken a significant toll on me.
No matter what I’ve learnt about the past I will still be plagued by all that I missed out on and all that I was never given an opportunity to experience and enjoy.
So far as the “question of the day”.
I don’t know what my taglines would be.
I suppose that my taglines would change drastically prior to March 5th, 2011, and after March 5th, 2011.
My results from my DNA test finally became available today.
An interesting makeup.
I’m not surprised about the England, Northwestern Europe, Scottish, and Irish.
The England & Northwestern Europe group also contains the French, so that’s where the Dagenais would have originated from before settling in Eastern Canada as the Acadians.
The fact that Germany, France, England, and other regions are all lumped together really isn’t that surprising.
For the last 10 thousand or so years the people that lived in these regions would invade and conquer their neighbours on a never ending rotating manner.
For example the people know as the Brittons today only share a tiny bit of DNA with their original ancestors from just 5,000 years ago.
The Indigenous Americas would be from my paternal grandmother.
I received a bunch of notifications about potential relations, most from the Dagenais and Waniandy side of my family tree. Nothing from the Gill side.
It does look as if my grandmother might actually have only been 1/2 Cree and not full Cree. Her mother’s maiden name seems to originate from Albania. Have to do some more digging.
One of the things that I’ve had to endure over the years is the constant talking over
I’ve had many instances of being written off and ignored.
In the past I had always hoped that I was just misunderstanding.
But often it’s not.
People have said that I don’t exert myself enough.
One of the most startling episodes of this was when we had an outside management company managing the physical plant at the hospital where I work.
When I started working at the hospital in 2005 I re-opened the welding shop. No one had the ability to weld since the last person with welding experience left. So I started welding. One of the managers would absolutely refuse to ask me to do any type of welding work for him even though there were lots of projects. The other manager blamed this on my “flamboyance” and that I was flaunting it too much?
I was thinking to myself “what the fuck?”
I wasn’t yet out of the closet.
But then again at that point in time it was almost 10 years since a Vancouver Police Department officer wrote my mugging off as a “gay trick gone bad”.
And then I started to realize that a lot of what I had been through in life up to that point in life was due to some sort of “queer vibe” that I had exhibited.
To this date I’ve never figured out what this “vibe” was. But it must have been noticeable.
Was this the same vibe that put me in the sights of Captain McRae and his teenaged accomplice?
Was this the same “vibe” that got the shit beat out of me numerous times at school because I “walked like a girl”, “didn’t have a girlfriend”, “looked like a faggot”?
Was this the same vibe that attracted numerous adult men to me for sexual favours while I was under 16?
Was this the same vibe that caused another manager that I worked for to constantly refer to me as “Freddie Mercury” and to constantly remind me that gay sex leads to AIDs.
Was this the same vibe that caused the son of a company in St. Albert, Alberta to exclaim that there’s no place for fags at his father’s company?
Was this the same vibe that caused Ed from Classic Billiards to poke and prod me to admit that I had a same sex attraction?
Is this the same vibe that allows service contractors and vendors to ignore me even when I’m the one who called them in for service?
It’s so much fun at work dealing with contractors who ignore you and instead start talking to someone else who has no idea of what’s going on or what the service call is about.
But Bobbie, you’re the Chief Engineer!
Surely people have to take you seriously?
No.
Things are great when I’m communicating via email.
Things go off the rails when I deal with people face to face.
It’s those “queer vibes” apparently.
And in the macho “trades” field that I find myself in, these “queer vibes” are an outright turn-off to a lot of guys.
The only reason that I’m at where I’m at is my knowledge, my skills, and my abilities.
There are numerous people over the years who would have gladly destroyed me because of my “vibe”.
And I know it’s that “vibe”.
The was one guy at the hospital that used to turn to me for advice and knowledge and help with getting projects done.
But after management was brought back in house an I was promoted to the non-management position of Chief Engineer which allowed me to dress more appropriately for my gender identity, his opinion of me soured to the point where he was sticking a knife in my back on almost a weekly basis.
And I have absolutely no doubts that if I were to meet some of my previous co-workers and employers that their opinions of me and their attitudes towards me would change drastically from what they were before.
Yeah, okay, fine.
In the last couple of years I’ve switched over to dresses, I do my nails, and I’m more often than not in heels.
Does that make my knowledge worth any less?
Apparently so.
VPD Constable Gil Puder
VPD constable Gil Puder was the investigator assigned to my mugging.
I was working the Tuesday through Saturday 14:00 to 22:00 shift at the bowling centre that I worked at.
If I left work at 22:00 sharp, I could make it downtown to watch the late shows at either the Famous Players Capitol 6 or the Cineplex Granville 7.
This fateful weekend I went to see a movie called “Congo” at the Capitol 6. I’ve covered the mugging elsewhere, so I won’t get into the details.
But, the end result is even though I had located a video tape that showed me, my two assailants, and what triggered the mugging, VPD constable Gil Puder refused to pick up the video tape or to even just go and view the video tape and speak to the theatre manager.
Gil Puder told me right to my face that until I admitted the “truth”, that I had picked this guy up in a bar and that this was a “trick gone bad”, that he wasn’t going to help.
So, there never was an investigation.
Puder defended.
A few years later when I had moved into commercial property management one of the plumbers that worked for us knew Gil Puder.
This plumber and I were having coffee at a local coffee shop discussing some upcoming projects that I had for him.
This revelation only came up because the plumber used to play ice hockey with Puder and Puder had just died due to a brain tumour.
I asked the plumber if this Gil Puder that he played hockey with had been a VPD officer, the plumber said that yes, Gil had been a VPD officer.
I gave the plumber my opinion of Puder and explained to him what caused me to have this opinion of Puder.
The plumber seemed quite taken aback and then the plumber started to justify what Puder had opined.
“Bob, you gotta admit, you don’t have a girlfriend or a wife, and you don’t exactly come across as a ladies man”, and “Look at it from Gil’s point of view, you got mugged on Burrard at Georgia, the gays are down on Burrard and Davie, so what else what Gil supposed to conclude?”
There was also a general contractor that was used frequently that did tenant and building renovations.
I was the first power engineer that had ever worked for this employer, as such there was now a requirement to adhere to provincial and municipal codes. And this caused quite a row between the contractors and I. They were now required to pull permits for electrical, plumbing, construction, demolition, and asbestos abatement.
The general contractor would often wait until it was just him and I with no one else around and then he’d unleash on me with every homophobic slur and stereotype.
When I’d go talk to the general manager about this, the GM would talk to the contractor, and the contractor would profusely deny that he had said anything.
Thick skin.
It took me years to grow a thick enough skin to ignore these opinions of my worth.
And as much as I am able to ignore them in the modern day, the problem is they still have the ability to cause me to endure significant issues.
Employment is something that I can’t just up and change if I wanted to.
Do you have any idea how long it took to work up the confidence to start dressing the way that I wanted to and to even start on hormone therapy?
Do you realize how severely I have limited my future?
In 1980 the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service investigated Captain McRae for having committed “Acts of Homosexuality” with young children on Canadian Forces Base Namao. At the time “homosexuality” was viewed as a “victimless crime”. That tarred and feathered everyone involved with Captain McRae as a “homosexual”.
This is why I spent time in the care of Captain Terry Totzke receiving “help” with my “homosexuality” that I had exhibited.
In 2011 the CFNIS conducted an investigation into the actions of the babysitter.
As I’ve said elsewhere, the CFNIS had in their possession both the CFSIU investigation paperwork and the courts martial transcripts. The existence of which the CFNIS withheld from the MPCC and the Federal Court of Canada.
They knew what Captain McRae had been charged with, and they knew that it was the investigation of the babysitter for molesting numerous young children on base that triggered the investigation of Captain McRae.
But the CFNIS in 2011 would have been exposed to a report that was written back in 1980 when the attitude was that Captain McRae, the babysitter, and all of the other kids involved were “homosexuals” with perverted minds willingly participating in the victimless crime of homosexual sex.
Is this why the 2011 CFNIS investigation was such an abysmal failure?
They had the CFSIU investigation paperwork and the court martial transcripts that implicated the babysitter in the direct molestation of young children, but the CFNIS still had the audacity to call me a liar.
Anyways, enough for now.
Gotta get ready to catch my bus back to Vancouver.
WordPress sometimes prompts me to write about a certain topic. It’s geared towards “family” type events.
There are very few that actually seem to apply to me.
Today’s prompt was somewhat interesting.
I think the biggest fear that I had in my life was my father.
I overcame that fear somewhat in 2006 during a series of phone calls that I had with him.
Then there was his death in January of 2017.
That was a major relief.
My brother thinks that I’m over exaggerating my fear of Richard, but as Dr. Gabor Maté observed, “no two children have the same parents”.
The most significant fear that I had of Richard was his temper. Richard had very poor impulse control and very poor control of his anger. He also couldn’t take into account the difference in physical strength between himself and the person he was lashing out at.
My fear of Richard only grew more intense when I became involved with military social worker Captain Terry Totzke.
Richard is dead and gone. And the world is probably better off for this. But his effects still haunt me and have left their traces upon me.
My grandmother was another person that I feared as a kid.
Her anger and her impulse control were worse than Richard’s, but at least she lacked the physical strength of Richard.
Alcohol. I’ve always feared being an alcoholic.
Both my father and my grandmother were intense alcoholics. Both were happy drunks for the most part. Conversely both were intensely angry people when they were sobering up.
I’ve had so little alcohol in my life I can almost remember every exact time.
The last time that I had a drink was back in July of 2011.
Before that it was January of 2010
Before that it was August of 2006
Before that it was September of 2005
Before that it was May of 1994
Before that it was sometime in the winter of 1990 in Gagetown, New Brunswick.
Before that it was sometime around 1986.
I can’t remember all of the “sips” that my father or my grandmother would give me when they were drunk.
I do remember the beer that grandma made me drink in the summer of 1984.
Most of these were just casual get-togethers when I was changing jobs and moving up the so called ladder.
But becoming an alcoholic has always been one of my fears.
Growing up on military bases I was exposed to a significant amount of alcoholism. It was as if being an alcoholic was a requirement to join the Canadian Forces back in the ’50s through the ’90s.
Being a “homosexual” and subsequently growing up to be like the babysitter was always a major fear of mine. Both Captain Totzke and my father would keep telling me that if I didn’t stop kissing, hugging, and being interested in other boys that I would grow up to be just like the babysitter and the priest from Namao.
Imagine the type of fear that would instil into a 9 to 11 year old.
Being told that you’d be going to a psychiatric hospital or jail for “allowing” the babysitter to do what he had done.
Okay, so I had a little bit of a learning curve with my estrogen patches.
Yes, they’re supposed to stick you your skin. But I found for the first couple of days my patches kept falling off.
And not really wanting to miss out on any of my meds, I had to think of something to do to keep these from coming off.
If I could put them on my upper arms like a nicotine patch, that would have worked, but the estrogen patches have to go on either my butt or my lower belly for the best effect.
So I turned to Tegaderm.
I put the patch on, then I put a Tegaderm dressing over top of the patch. And the patches don’t fall off. which is nice.
I don’t want to miss out on any of the meds.
Coming up this Friday I have my first blood test to make sure that my body is handling the estrogen properly.
As I’ve said, I’ve never really taken part in pride, and I really don’t identify with it.
I guess part of it has to do with the environment that I grew up in.
Military communities were isolated. And by isolated I mean that the Canadian Armed Forces had control over the types of people that were allowed to live in the military communities on base.
By way of filtering recruits, the Canadian Armed Forces could control the political leanings of those living on the bases. And it should be of no surprise that these military communities were very conservative and right leaning.
The thing is, when you’re living within these communities, especially if your exposure to the outside world is very limited, you come to see the political leanings of these communities as being “normal”.
Yes, Canadian Forces Administrative Order CFAO 19-20 did no apply to children living on base, it only applied to members of the Canadian Armed Forces. But as has been indicated through various studies, members of the Canadian Armed Forces often had a problems with separating their military careers from their home lives.
As the civilian social worker that dealt with my family noted during various home visits to our PMQ on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach, Mr. Gill orders his children with simple commands and answers their questions with yes or no replies and the children don’t question these decisions.
Being in the Canadian Armed Forces, Richard was nothing more than a cog in a machine that demanded his servile obedience. His was not a position to question. His was a position to do as he was told. And like many men who are stripped of the authority in their lives, he made up for this lack of authority by exerting his authority on those he could.
When it came to me and my issues from Canadian Forces Base Namao he was not going to question the authority of Captain Terry Totzke. If Captain Totzke said that I was a homosexual, that I was exhibiting signs of homosexuality, who was master corporal Gill to question this?
When I’ve talked to other base brats about how things were on base I get this Pollyannish rose coloured view of what things were like on base. This usually comes from former brats that didn’t have “issues” and therefore weren’t exposed to the underbelly of life in the “company town”.
I have encountered a few former brats that don’t participate in any of the social media groups for base brats. They want nothing to do with acknowledging their past. And I have an inkling that the brats who don’t want anything to do with remembering their pasts as base brats vastly outnumber the number of brats that celebrate their past as base brats.
The number of broken and dysfunctional families that lived on the bases was probably a high percentage, especially when you look at how the recruiting process would naturally filter out more liberal minded recruits. The military communities were rife with homophobia, racism, misogyny, victim blaming, victim shaming.
Another matter that played into the sterility of the military community was the fact that military housing could only be rented to members of the Canadian Armed Forces, and that these members had the ability to decide who could live in these houses and who couldn’t. If a service member wanted his spouse out of “his” PMQ, she was booted off the base by the military police. Same thing for his kids. As long as provincial law allowed for it, the serving member could give his kid the boot. The age that a child can live on their own varies from province to province. In Ontario a 16 year old can move out on their own.
I’m not sure what the rules are any more, but in my day living on the bases, 18 was the absolute oldest a base brat could be. Once you hit 19 you were expected to get off the base. There were exceptions to this rule, care givers could live in military housing so long as it was to look after military dependents, persons with disabilities could live on base past their 19th birthday, and students obtaining a higher education could continue to live on base until their 24th birthday.
As you can imaging, there wasn’t a lot of diversity. Everything was sterile. Everything was the military mindset.
Queer kids just learnt to stay in the closet.
Queer kids learnt that they were defective and a national security threat.
Kids on base learnt that there were no victims, that it always took two to tango.
Kids on base learnt that compassion was a liability.
Living on base there were no “others” like us.
Living on base we only had exposure to adults that passed the requirements of the Canadian Armed Forces recruiting agents.
Our view of the world was shaped by the monochromatic views of the world espoused by these serving soldiers that passed the conformity tests.
You know all of those soldier that have been implicated in hazing rituals over the years? Yeah we grew up amongst those people.
I lived on the base that was the home of the Canadian Airborne Regiment. We grew up amongst the mindset and the racism that lead to the death of Shidane Arone in Somalia.
All those sexual assaults that occurred in the Canadian Armed Forces? Those were committed by men of the Canadian Forces, many of whom were our fathers.
The misogyny and homophobia that were rampant in the Canadian Armed Forces back in the day? The men espousing these views were often our fathers.
I grew up in a community that allowed everyone up the chain of command to escape responsibility for the murder of Shidane Arone and allowed a lowly private, private Kyle Brown, to be made the scape goat for the whole sordid affair.
I grew up in a community that allowed sexually abused children to be blamed for the abuse they suffered at the hand of members of the Canadian Armed Forces.
I grew up in a community where the chain of command could determine who was a victim and who wasn’t a victim.
I grew up in a community that had the legal power to investigate itself and its members for sexual assaults against children.
I grew up in a community in which officers with no legal training and no legal background could summarily dismiss service offence charges that had been brought against their subordinates.
I grew up in a community in which a 3-year-time-bar applied to all service offences, including service offences of a purely civilian nature.
I grew up in a community which claimed criminal code offences related to children as service offences to be dealt with solely through the military justice system.
I grew up in a community served by such a compromised justice system that it was dismantled and restructured due to horrific miscarriages of justice.
Beeshive 